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I think that's a marvelous language,” said Arpin. “But it is not
the language for the masses. It is really esoteric.”
IBM
equipped
its 5100 and 5110 desktops with both
APL
and
BASIC
, and
MCM
could have done the same. There was some talk at
MCM
of supplying the
MCM
/800 with a
BASIC
interpreter at the
time when the sales of the machine had almost stalled. “And
one decision was,” said Ramer, “well, we put
BASIC
on it [the
MCM
/800] and a word processor.” But, in the end, nothing was
done and
MCM
was unable to benefit from the growing accept-
ance of
BASIC
and other languages. Instead, the
APL
priest-
hood within
MCM
was utterly devoted to winning the hearts
and souls of the
APL
community, which they perceived as the
ultimate judge of
MCM
's endeavour. Unfortunately for
MCM
,
APL
ers were largely reluctant to see the
MCM
machines as more
than just slow, curious-looking systems that happened to run
a dialect of
APL
. “But the
APL
community was not the right
judge,” explained Arpin. “They were not the ones that [were]
gonna buy it, because they were all working on [the] I.P. Sharp
[time-sharing system]. They wanted that big, big system. They
were not the customers.”
Whether it was in his job description or just his own strong
conviction about
APL
's superiority, Williams also promoted
MCM
desktop computers as exclusively
APL
hardware, at
all costs. “
MCM
had pioneered its [
APL
's] use in a mini dur-
ing 1974,” explained Williams during a 1977 presentation to
press and industry representatives. “We took a gamble on it -
now we've seen acceptance at all levels from students through
computer professionals … We have decided to be a specialist
in
APL
.” However, finding a strategy to successfully promote
MCM
as an
APL
company to a large and well-defined seg-
ment of the data processing market was beyond challenging.
In March 1979, in an interview with
Canadian Datasystems
,
Williams admitted to persistent marketing problems: “We've
a spotty record in marketing. Our strength has definitely been
